CHIPILIRO GAMA: Shepherd Bushiri’s real name divides social media

The leader of the Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG), Shepherd Huxley Bushiri, goes by many names with the most famous one perhaps being Major 1. His staunch followers have also been known to call him Papa or Daddy.

His recent arrest in South Africa for money laundering seems to have unearthed a name that some claim to be his real name, that of Chipiliro Gama. It is claimed that this is the name the man of God went by before he became a man of the cloth.

Social media was awash with stories surrounding Bushiri’s real name with some claiming to have seen his travel documents that were surrendered to police bearing the name Chipiliro Gama.

Before he was known: Bushiri

Addressing congregants following his release yesterday, Bushiri revealed that his wife was “poisoned to within an inch of her life” in the past five months when protestors were demanding that he leave the country.

He thanked President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office, and the leadership of the EFF and BLF who had stood by him “in the past five weeks that we experienced situations after situations, starting with organised protests, to demands that I leave the country for which I am a permanent resident, to demands that the Pretoria branch be closed, my wife being poisoned to within an inch of her life, all the way to our incarceration”.